Pogue's Basics: The "Minimize All" keystroke in Windows

Sometimes you’ve got Windows open, and you want to have a look at your desktop to find a certain icon. Well, here’s a keyboard trick that lets you minimize all your windows at once, revealing your entire desktop. Just press Windows key+M (think of it as M for “Minimize all”). Boom! They all fly away to your taskbar.

Add the Shift key to that keystroke to bring them all back.

Oh — and if you want to hide all but one certain window, grab the title bar and give your mouse a little shake. Boom! Weird, huh?

Shake again to bring ’em back.

Tip: This shaking business makes a very snazzy YouTube demo video, but it’s not actually the easiest way to isolate one window. If the window you want to focus on is already the frontmost window, then you can just press Windows key+Home to achieve the same effect. Press that combo a second time to restore all the minimized windows.